Short explaination: The Nvidia control panel improperly detects RW2NC's engine.exe as Cossacks II ,
and applies a ddraw.dll hack to fix mouse overlay detection on newer video cards (8800 and up).
Force Nvidia control panel , not to use this profile , and the game runs fine.

Not sure how far from the end of the game I am, defending Thristburg from a massive army of 40+ units,
but havent had a single crash 10 hours of playtime.